Berlin

The Berlin Senate has introduced a “rental price brake” to slow down the city’s spiralling housing costs. Germany has the lowest level of home-ownership in the European Union, and Berlin’s 3.5 million residents – over 80% of whom are renters – were the first in the country to experience the “mietpreisbremse” in action from June 2015.

The median price per square metre is calculated in each of the city’s districts based on a census of rent prices, and landlords are prohibited from raising rents above ten per cent of the neighbourhood average.

Estimates indicate that based on a one-bedroom property of seventy square metres, the lowest rental area in Berlin has an average rent of around £250 per month whilst the highest area’s average would remain under £800.

With up to 50,000 new residents moving to the city every year, and though exceptions have been made for new-builds and largescale property renovations, it is still hoped that lower income Berliners would less likely be pushed to the outskirts of the city because of high housing costs.

In recent years, to curb gentrification the city has passed laws limiting holiday rentals and the conversion of existing properties into luxury apartment blocks in central districts.

Berlin has long experimented with innovative methods of residential co-housing, promoting collaborative and cooperative ways of living – from collectively-funded co-ops (“baugruppen”) that hire construction workers and architects to custom-build their homes, to shared intergenerational living schemes encouraging the idea that young and old can mutually support one another by cohabiting together.

“We don’t want a situation like in London or Paris. The reality in Paris or London is that people with low income have to live in the further-out districts of the city.”

All intellectually disabled people in Sweden can choose where they would like to live and the type of support they receive in the community after the closing down of all former institutions. The de-institutionalisation process began in the 1970s (in the face of some parental opposition), as community-based services gradually came to replace institutionalised care provision in full. Group homes – often where five-or-so people live in individual small apartments – and supported living offers people with complex needs the freedom of their own space and ability to make their own choices – from housing to shopping and cultural activities. To aid this, the Swedish Government funds over three hundred ‘Personal Ombuds’ – representatives independent of healthcare services and family – who support people to assert their legal rights and make major life decisions.

Over 80 per cent of Singaporeans live in apartments built by the state Housing and Development Board (HDB), while 90 per cent own their home. In 1959, less than one in ten citizens owned their homes and it was clear that there was an acute shortage of sanitary housing. Post-independence, the Government established the HDB, which within five years built over 50,000 flats and encouraged citizens to use funds from a social security savings scheme to work towards owning their homes. Since then, the board has been able to provide publicly-built housing to a growing number of citizens and, with a staff of 5000, manages nearly a million housing units.